


Every Man Casts A Shadow

by squirrellysemantics



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirrellysemantics/pseuds/squirrellysemantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone believes Shepard died when the Normandy broke over Alchera and with good reason. Emily Wong discovers that some work through loss in their own way.  </p><p>An mshenko interlude prompted by a news report for Earthborn Shepard when first arriving on the Citadel in Mass Effect 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Man Casts A Shadow

Ten minutes of civil chit chat was enough to get any sane person crawling the walls, but there’s a story here in a sea of Alliance brass and sanity is the first thing that any reporter loses when she gets wind of a story.

One hacked guest list later and she keeps to the fringe of the crowd of dress blues, noticing a tension that has nothing to do with her.  That edge sharpens once she’s recognized and Emily Wong knows she’s got a lot of work to do.

The need to ask questions comes from a visceral place, this desire to dig down, this fishing out what matters to piece together what she can from stray scraps of conversation. There’s little to go on except the insignia as far as the eye can see, but the dearth of information won’t stop her from looking. The bigger the secret, the deeper the Alliance wants it buried and all her instincts scream that what she seeks is the deepest yet. 

But she needs to start somewhere and that somewhere is in this who’s who of big names, sharing pleasantries amongst the Alliance elite to remember a dead man no one wants to talk about.

It’s been a year and a half since Shepard and the Normandy fell above Alchera. The loss speaks of sacrifice, demonstrates a mettle she hopes to never test because she’s not so sure it’s something she would pass. MIA presumed KIA by a Geth superweapon. That’s the official word, anyway, for whatever that’s worth. It took a pound of flesh and a whole lot of credits for Emily to get her hands on that report and what she got was a blanketed mess of REDACTEDs and TOP SECRETs but the doublespeak that sat in plain view had a stink that rose high above the usual bull shit. 

Then people started disappearing. Entire colonies vanishing followed by curt denials and lots of ‘no comments’.

Old fashioned research got her started, though, and it came as no surprise that star charts had the dead zone ringing Alchera.

Her usual sources went dry. Weeks turned into months of stonewalling and roadblocks and the need to know, the creeping urgency that something big and very, very bad lay coiled in the darkness itched her like an infected scab.

Tracking down the crew of the Normandy had been exercise in frustration. Of the survivors, the aliens lay beyond a reporter’s political reach. Finding the humans who made it out alive hadn’t been much easier and that burn to know still festered.

She picked and scratched and chewed until she ended up here, at a ceremony to honor the fallen. One particular fallen. The Alliance had far too many of those of late, except this type of ceremony was not one commonly held.

But that’s because John Shepard was an uncommon man.

She ducks her head past another somber three star.

“Damn fine soldier,” says one faceless admiral.

“One of our best and brightest,” murmurs another.

Desperation twists into a thin, cold knot as she makes her way through the banquet hall.  She didn’t want this, to tread on the memory of the man who helped her once but there’s a trail of innocents that disappeared in his troubled wake and she can’t let it go ignored.

Won’t let their passing go unnoticed.

Doubt snakes up her spine as Emily’s search bears no fruit.   The hall is packed but not _that_ packed that she could miss the sole reason she was here. Could she be wrong? Had she misjudged?

The Alliance had no qualms remembering its heroes. Statues, stations, ships.  All a token to some sacrifice, their significance lost to history.

When she heard of the dedication, she’d done the leg work, bust her ass to get to this very room on this very date.

The Shepard Memorial Scholarship.

Helping disadvantaged youths on Earth find a home in the Alliance.

With no wealth or family to speak of, _someone_ made sure Shepard the _man_ would not be forgotten.  And who that someone might be could be the fissure she needs to crack open the mystery she knows is waiting. Surely-

Ah.

Lines etched their way deeper into his face then when last Emily saw him in person, but the same man she met when Shepard took out Fist back on the Citadel holds himself distant from the crowd tonight.  Most everything else she knows comes from that salarian report on Virmire that cost half a month’s salary.

The crewmember Shepard brought out alive while another was not so lucky.

His story comes to her in a strange amalgam. The battle of the Citadel, the fight with Saren.  Another brush with death over Alchera, but this time, Shepard doesn’t make it out with him.

He keeps to the shadows, alone except for a civil pour of bourbon untouched in his hand. Newly added rank weighs down his sleeves, she knows he’ll be off on some super-secret mission soon, but her sources don’t give her more than that. His dress blues hangs stiff and tight across his shoulders, as does his melancholy when he thinks no one is looking.  

All this work to find an answer, but what Emily finds is instead answer is cloaked in sadness, folded inward and lost in a labyrinth of memory.

A man in mourning.

The litany of questions balanced on the tip of her tongue falls- though she can’t remain silent.

“Staff Commander Alenko?”

The promotion sits on him too freshly earned and it takes a moment for him to blink away his fog.

“Ms Wong,” he acknowledges on awakening.

“Good to see you again,” he adds, flipping on the auto pilot that puts him a little straighter, the commander that he’s become dropping firmly into place.

“Small ceremony like this?” His voice comes out as if dragged across a road of broken glass.  “Didn’t think society events would be your kind of reporting.”

“You’re right,” she offers in all honesty, her hands twisting uselessly before her.  “It’s not.”

His brows tighten and his scrutiny coning in on her throws her off kilter but she holds his gaze to finish.

“Or it wasn’t,” she presses on through his suspicion. “I didn’t know Shepard long but he saved the galaxy more times than I can count and I’ve been so focused on the whole that the _individual_ is one story I never got to share! I’ll find what I’m looking for another way, but right now all I want out of tonight is…”

Babbling. She knows she’s babbling but she also knows she should never have come here, never disturbed this freshly turned grave.  “Please- _please-_ accept my condolences on your loss-”

Whatever Alenko expected her to say, this was not it, but that’s more than fair, because she damn well hadn’t come here expecting to say it.

But a funeral isn’t the time for questions, and she curses herself a fool for not realizing that this is what she’s been barging in all along.

His shields falter as honest sympathy hits him full on broadside, his eyes revealing a slow, bright burn and grief plucks the sense straight from his mouth. “You.. That’s.. I should-“

“There you are, Commander.” 

An unmistakable rumble steals up behind them and brings with it a force of will.

“Captain Anderson! I don’t think we’ve met! I’m-”

Her sense of self-preservation brings Emily to try, but the captain radiates a displeasure that would send a matriarch gibbering apologetically into a corner.

“I didn’t realize I had any reporters on the invite list, Ms Wong. This _was_ meant to be a _private_ ceremony.”

His pause is rich and ominous.

“I don’t take kindly to anyone harassing my officers.” 

A tremulous thought in the back of her mind idly wonders what the inside of an Alliance jail cell looks like and if she’ll discover that answer tonight.

“Sir!” Through this all, Alenko regroups and faces down his captain. “It’s fine. She’s with me.”

Skepticism comes at the commander from all corners, but seconds tick into an eternity until Anderson sees something that he can accept in the lie.

“All right, Commander.” 

It sure doesn’t feel all right- not a _t all-_ but the pressure that’s so near to bursting releases in a sigh that lasts forever and turns the Alliance captain, the war hero, into a mere mortal once again.

“We’re about to get started,” Anderson says softly, looking to Alenko with his own world of weary. “Are you sure you don’t want to say a few words?  This ceremony is your doing, after all.”

Of course it is, but Emily doesn’t need to hear this confirmation to know the truth it holds.

The commander shakes his head before his words ever makes it out as if he’s known the answer to this question for a long time. “No, sir. I’ve… never been one for public speaking. Shepard needs someone who can do him justice.”

Transforming once again, Anderson reveals a small smile that is made no less in being shaped in sadness. “Don’t worry, son. I think you’ve taken care of that already.”

Alenko stands mute but the turmoil fluttering the muscle along his jaw says that there’s nothing left in him to counter.

His respite comes when Anderson tugs at the edge of his tunic and becomes the captain once again.

“Commander,” Anderson offers in brisk farewell, but this is not so swift that he can’t pause and he does and Emily gets a final glance full of warning, daring her to find out just what happens to someone who harms one of his own.

“Ms Wong.”

“Sir,” she manages weakly as he departs, and Emily finally found one question she has no interest in answering.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback appreciated. Haven't written jack in months. Never noticed the Shepard Memorial Scholarship news report until a recent ME2 playthrough and this happened.
> 
> edited to add that I am a bad person for not citing the title as a quote from Henry David Thoreau


End file.
